The neuro-tarot: designing your own deck of cards

Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1991 by Antero Alli

IN RESPONSE TO THE PERVASIVE UNCERTAINTY of these times, thousands of maps and models (books & teachers) have emerged offering easy exits, secret passageways and other psychological instructions for restoring perspective. As more people pass through these exotic belief systems and esoteric mystical codes, they eventually discover how these externally imposed maps and models act as buffers to the very guidance sought for in the first place. Of these buffers, a variety come disguised as still another form of disembodied spirituality, asking us to believe that the source of our knowledge, power and authority lies outside ourselves ... out of body ... in a host of channeled entities, crystals, angels, cults, organized and disorganized religions, UFOS, moms & dads, governments, IBM, CBS, FBI, LSD, and the ten thousand things. Where does one turn to restore lost perspective?

The most difficult thing for people to believe is often the very thing that is happening to them. We do not habitually register the state or candition we are in; that habit must be learned. Without it, however, life passes us by like a missed bus. One way to reclaim lost autonomy is to temporarily defuse cultural canditioning by learning to confess self-knowledge. Some of us, for instance, would never dream of designing a Tarot deck. By convincing ourselves of a lack of "metaphysical expertise," we go out and buy mass-produced tarot decks made by other human beings who dare to lay their souls bare by their own self-confessed revelations. Granted, other people's maps will always be valuable to anyone venturing through terra incognita; we're all part of the human experience. Yet, how much more enriching would it be to play with a deck of cards custom-designed to your own personal vision and the internal symbology that is its voice?

Neuro comes from the Greek "nerve," referring to our most basic unit of biological intelligence: the neuron. The trinary function of the neuron is to absorb, store and transmit information and/or energy. (Re-read the last sentence for nature's own definition of intelligence.) No longer does "intelligence" have to refer to the mere act of gathering and storing dead data. Real, live intelligence finds its expression through our talents for intuitive osmosis (absorption), personal interpretation (storage) and the communication skills (transmission) connecting us to the world. In other words, nobody's going to know how intelligent you actually are until you can communicate what you've taken in and interpreted for yourself. It is possible to do so through the medium of a deck of cards expressing how you absorb, interpret and transmit your everyday life experience according to your Central Neural (the word "nervous" gets on my nerves) System.

MATERIALS

A Neuro-Tarot is a symbolic device for tracking images in the psyche and the world around us, for the purpose of creating more imaginative interactions with it all. There seem to be three basic methods for constructing a Neuro-Tarot: cut-and-paste collage, artistic illustration, and combined collage-illustration. Each approach works well enough depending on your degree of available energy, artistic talent, and leisure time. To convey the fundamentals, this article will only explore the cut-and-paste collage method of designing a Neuro-Tarot; I trust the illustrators will catch on soon enough and start drawing their own cards.

Preliminary research for this project involves locating and obtaining the following raw materials: numerous copies of your favorite magazines, especially those with the greatest variety of font sizes and styles alongside the most gorgeous illustrations and photos. In the service of Art, you will mutilate and destroy these magazines by cutting out choice words and images to form the basis of your deck of cards. (Note: collage art bypasses copyright law when the combination of separate images creates an entirely new work of art: yours.) To complete your Neuro-Tarot Kit, you will require about fifty blank index cards, a glue stick, scissors, a dark felt-tip pen, and plenty of scratch paper.

You may also find a handmade editing frame useful. This can be created easily enough by cutting a rectangle, correspanding to your preferred size of Tarot card, out of a larger piece of posterboard, leaving you with a window exactly the size of the cards you wish to create. By superimposing this window over any magazine illustration or photograph, you can immediately determine what part of it you want to use for your card (see below).

THE ART OF FALLING APART

What makes a deck of Tarot cards work? An effective Neuro-Tarot depends on the integrity of your self-knowledge ... of your willingness to completely expose yourself to yourself. Self-honesty ranks a lot higher than artistic merit when you're creating a self-divination device. When is the best time to design a NeuroTarot? When your Central Neural System is activated. This happens naturally enough when you're in a state of obvious uncertainty, and more so when you're in trouble: hot water - emotional catastrophe - psychological disaster - personal shambles ... where you literally feel "in pieces" and would do anything to feel whole again. If you're not in trouble (and if you're not, you really are!), it's still possible to design a Tarot based on your wanderfully untroubled life. (Whoever said Art requires suffering 7 If you can stand it, design your Neuro-Tarot under the influence of unbridled ecstacy.)